Regular readers of the blog may know that I feel strongly about the importance of skilled leadership in a lab. I believe scientists need to be taught the so-called “soft skills” that are required to be a good leader.

Last year, I recruited a team of dedicated, like-minded graduate students, and we created a class to teach ourselves what we wanted to know–what is the best way to run a lab? As we learned over the course of that semester, effective leadership is not second nature to most scientists, nor is it a mystery of the universe. There are some “best practices” for how to lead and manage that are well-known outside the academic culture, and they should be taught formally as part of a scientist’s graduate curriculum.

For this coming fall, our training program is growing into a series of talks that we’re calling Science Leadership and Management, or SLAM for short. (Allow me to pause here and give a standing ovation to John Haberstroh for his marketing genius. Who doesn’t love a good acronym?) We are preparing a stellar lineup of guest lecturers from a variety of science career paths to speak on subjects like motivating students, building effective teams, delivering feedback, and more. Our vision is that this type of training will someday be developed on a national level, to be applied at any university for any scientific discipline.

If this sounds like a good idea to you, there is something you can do right now to support SLAM. Go here to vote for our entry in the 2013 NSF Graduate Education Challenge. Teresa Lee (beloved BSR author) and I wrote an essay about SLAM for this contest, which you can read below. I’ve also included our answers to a brief questionnaire that accompanied our submission. Please vote now, and ask your friends to do the same!

Note: Registration is required to vote. After you’ve voted for us, take a look at the other entries. There are a lot of great ideas there, and I guarantee you will come away with a bit more hope for the future of science.

Today’s post was written by Kristina Kangas and Chris Shaver.

There’s a lot of hype about open access (OA). Anna Goldstein did a great overview of Open Access Explained, and 55% of respondents to the poll say, “Viva la revolución! I only publish in open access journals.” If you are not yet a part of this vibrant, emerging world of scientific dissemination, here are five ways and reasons to engage in open access as well as precautionary measures worth considering, to ensure that you are not infringing on copyright laws.

Follow the link to read the five why’s and how’s of open access!

If you ask a tenured professor, they’ll often tell you that graduate school largely serves a single purpose: to prepare the next generation of professors.  Such an approach to graduate school reflects a romantic view of academia: hundreds of bright young minds flocking together at the worlds greatest institutions of new ideas and cutting-edge thinkers.  However, upon their arrival at the annals of nearly any big-name university, a different reality begins to set in.

Contrary to the enthusiastic encouragement of their professors, getting an academic job isn’t simply a matter of going to grad school and settling into a tenure-track position.  Instead, only a small fraction of them will actually get an academic job.  In a recent report, the NSF suggested that a mere 20% of graduate students get jobs in the academic world, a staggeringly small number given that the “sole” purpose of graduate school is supposed to be training professors.

This is largely a product of the changing demographics in the world of academia.  Just like any industry, the world of university-driven research has attracted more and more people to it, and universities in turn have expanded their ability to train graduate students.  However, this influx of eager young scientists has not coincided with an increase in the number of jobs available to academics.  As such, a fixed slice of the pie is being divided up by larger and larger groups of people, often leading to a cutthroat and politically-driven culture of scientific one-upsmanship.